Posted on 02/10/2013 4:12:37 AM PST by Kaslin
“People call this the ‘new normal.’ Let me assure you there is nothing normal about this at all. It’s the new ‘abnormal,’ and it won’t last, because as free people we won’t stand for it…”
With those remarks, business magnate and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes drew thunderous applause from his audience.
It was October of 2012, about 2 weeks before our last presidential election. Forbes was speaking to a crowd of 10,000 in the comforts of a beautiful indoor sporting area (the “Idaho Center”). He was headlining the “Power Up!” business and motivational seminar with Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and Zig Ziglar protégé Krish Dhanam (fyi-we need more native-born Americans to understand American liberty as well as this guy from India named “Krish” understands it).
Forbes had just finished explaining why a confluence of cheap credit, billions of dollars in stimulus spending, lots of new taxes on “rich people,” and a growing-by-the-second government debt have all failed to stimulate our economy. He was confirming with his technical explanation, what many of us instinctively know in our hearts: the reality that no organization- no individual or family, no business, no government – can spend its way out of debt and re-distribute its way to prosperity.
We should all hope that Forbes will be proven right – that, eventually, “as free people, we won’t stand for it.” Because in the election that occurred two weeks after Forbes’ speech, Americans didn’t merely “stand for it” - we asked for more of “it.”
Yet here is our reality: if Americans continue to vote (either blindly or intentionally) for politicians who viciously take expanding portions of wealth away from our society’s producers, and then selfishly redistribute that wealth to the people of their choosing, eventually the producers will stop producing as much wealth, the politicians will run out of other’s people’s money to redistribute, and we will all suffer the consequences.
The social disorder and collapse of Greece and Spain could be our future in the U.S., if, “as free people,” we don’t choose more wisely.
For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, examples abound in this present day of how not to construct a national economy. Greece and Spain qualify, yes, and so does Venezuela. And within the last few months the news from France, another bureaucratic, debt-laden, and not-so-free-anymore part of the world, should be a wake-up call to Americans, as well.
After five years of service from President Nicolas Sarkozy, a leader who sought to reduce government controls of the economy and to stimulate private enterprise, French voters tossed him aside last May in favor of a presidential candidate who was nominated jointly by both the French Socialist Party, and France’s “Radical Left Party.” Francois Hollande campaigned with a set of 60 propositions - referred to as his “manifesto” – which included raising taxes on corporations; raising taxes on banks; raising taxes on “rich” individuals; lowering the official retirement age back down to age 60 from 62; hiring 60,000 new government school teachers; and establishing government subsidized “youth jobs programs” in regions of high unemployment (does any of this sound familiar?).
Today, many French citizens seem horrified that – shock! – President Hollande is doing precisely what he pledged to do. “The situation is very serious” noted Laurence Parisot, head of France’s largest labor union MEDEF in an interview with the London Telegraph. “Some business leaders are in a state of quasi-panic” he claimed, as the Telegraph reported that “France is sliding into a grave economic crisis and risks a full-blown ‘hurricane’ as investors flee rocketing tax rates.”
Within his first six months in office, French President Hollande managed to raise national capital gains taxes from 34.5% to 62.2%, and now the French people are freaking-out. Juxtapose that with the hatred that American Golfer Phil Mickelson experienced when he acknowledged last month that, between federal and California state income taxes, he’s having “62, or 63%” of his earnings taken away each year, and the reality-check is even more striking.
In short, the French apparently now believe that this level of taxation is a dangerous and destructive thing. In America, however, “rich guy” Phil Mickelson is a dangerous and destructive thing.
And consider this: Laurence Parisot, a major, national labor union leader (arguably a counterpart of Teamsters leader James P. Hoffa here in the U.S.) is upset because a Socialist President is taking more money from “the rich” and re-distributing it to others via government employment programs. Such policies would seem like a dream come true for the AFL-CIO, yet the union leader in France seems to understand that the “rich” in his country play a vital role in other people’s livelihoods, and simply seizing more of their money is harmful for everybody – even unionized workers.
The backlash that the Socialist President is enduring suggests that maybe the citizenry is waking up and facing reality. But are Americans facing economic reality yet?
We observed in the so-called “fiscal cliff negotiations” that President Obama’s political abilities to raise income and capital gains taxes are limited. And the suffering among lower and middle income Americans from the infliction of higher payroll taxes, and Obamacare taxes and penalties is so real that last week, even the New York Times had to report on it.
Let’s hope that Steve Forbes is right – that this is not our “new normal;” that we will reject politicians who are vicious with society’s wealth creators. It may, however, have to get much worse in America, before we embrace reality.
We will be pushed into this slowly kicking and screaming if we dont start fighting back, we need leaders in our camp and dont look toward the GOP they have been bought sold threatened and or paid off.
It is rapidly becoming a reality. As for being awake to it, the majority of the peasants seem to be welcoming it.
Will America wake up to a socialist reality?
Nah.
We’re at the tipping point where the brilliant, intellectual, really-really smart Progressive geniuses denigrate the “dumb, knuckle-dragging, bible-thumping, gun-loving dolts in flyover country”.
(Herr Goebbles would be very proud, very proud indeed.)
IMHO
When Germany removes her gold from France and the USA, France will be first
“...because as free people we won’t stand for it...”
Suck it up, Charlie; Black America has been heard from, and they voted for Barack Lenin - in fact, many of them voted for him three or four times.
And the Republicans slept through the whole thing.
The soap box didn’t work.
The ballet box, neither.
Guess the bullet box is what we have left....
Just like Rome, we are now in the bread (EBT/Welfare) and circuses (NFL/NBA) phase of the decline. That phase in Rome lasted a couple of hundred years, I don’t think we have a couple of decades of this to go.....
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig"
source unknown.
This guy can’t read. Laurence Parisot is the head of MEDEF, which is an group of employers and entrepreneurs, not a labor union.
Gallic ping.
We, meaning all of us who went about our business, working, studying, trying to play by the ‘rules’, are all responsible to some extent because we ignored the propaganda machine as it chugged along and created a large voting block of people driven by entitlement and resentment. We let it happen in our schools, our universities, our media, our entertainment, and even in our churches, synagogues, etc.
When people like Sharpton and Jackson and the like weren't shouted down as bigots and hypocrites, we gave them and their message credibility.
When we kept sending our kids to universities that employed faculty with radical subversive, racist, and sometimes outright treasonous views (U of Illinois Chicago - Bill Ayers, Northwestern U - Bernadine Dorhn, as two examples), and didn't push for their dismissal, we empowered them and gave them a soap box from which to preach their propaganda to generations of students.
When we let the left scapegoat McCarthy and use him as a lightening rod to diminish and discredit all concern about socialist / communist influence in the US, we opened the door for a proliferation of socialists and outright communists in our society - including those in Congress and serving in the current executive branch.
When we let leftists abroad characterize us - largely unanswered / unchallenged - as an oppressive greedy world bully, and accuse us of broad human rights violations and bigotry, we let them plant their anti-US seeds and water them right under our noses. Their crop has been so successful that it now grows unchallenged in our own nation.
The list is extensive, and these things won't be reversed overnight. The subversive left are like mosquitoes. They know when you're vulnerable, and bite you when you're distracted, or in a place you can't reach, and, they are very successful in biting us when we're asleep.
I have a co-worker who voted for Obama twice - not because of what Obama stands for - but simply because he has a 'D' after his name. During his first term, we would often engage in political discussions, much to the entertainment of our fellow co-workers. During this period, his arguments would evolve. For example, before the passage of Obamacare, he would never defend the horrors of the actual bill, predicting instead it would never pass. But after its passage, he was finally forced to defend it for the first time.
Since Obama's re-election, I have lost all hope. Every argument that I have put up in the past and has been judged valid and true by our office audience has been tossed by the wayside by our electorate. So I seldom engage in these discussions since truth no longer matters in this nation. Yesterday, he asked me if I had anything to say about how things are going. I responded that there is no hope and that nothing could be worse than what our nation is facing for the next four years from the incompetence that is now leading it. He answers, "It could be worse."
"What could possibly be worse than this?"
"All out nuclear war" he responds.
This is what has now replaced critical thought in this country. As long as things are better than all-out nuclear war, we should celebrate the fact that fascist Democrats are calling the shots. We are screwed.
I used to say that it would take 20 years of Reagan to fix what Obama screwed up in four. But I do not believe it will ever be possible to recover from 8 years of Obama.
I get that feeling too. I run into people from dropouts to well educated that seem to relish a time when they no longer have to make decisions about day to day life. From the engineers making a well above average salary that can’t bear the idea of funding their own health care to the drop out who wonders who will feed their children, it seems that many are happy being dependent on others for basic survival.
To me this all seems bizarre. I feed my family. I provide the means for our healthcare, I provide our transportation, I provide shelter. It is not even a distant thought in my head to allow others to do that. I may be from a long ago mindset but I will not be beholden to others for my basic needs.
At times I wonder if what we are experiencing isn’t a recurring reset to civilization. Struggle for survival, peak, rot, collapse, begin again. We may be in the rot phase.
It is tragic that we picked Bush instead of Steve Forbes back in 2000. Forbes was by far the better man.
Your post #12 is dead on.
We woke up in a scialist America the morning after TARP was passed, before Barack Obama ever became President. He’s just pushing the envelope that was handed to him on a silver platter.
The rot has been around since the 1960's. Our culture has never been so disgusting. We're definitely in the collapse phase.
The feds are printing so much money right now, the bond market is going to collapse. That will lead to MASSIVE inflation. Those EBT cards aren't going to be buying squat. It'll be every family for itself.
People know something really bad is coming. People are preparing for "something". They can sense it. Cultural rot isn't what they're fearing. Their not building "rot" bunkers because a flaming queer moved into their neighborhood. They're preparing to save their lives!
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